From a 'Friend' in Afghanistan. Thought you might like a first hand report. It is not a biased and sanitized media version. Interesting

Hello Everyone:

I thought that I would send another update. So here it is.

Over the past month and a bit, I was deployed with my troop to an area in the Northern area of Kandahar Province, near the Kakriz District Centre. We initially deployed there with two teams of American Special Forces and two companies of Afghan National Army with their American training cadre. The operation was called Operation Adalat and its purpose was to disrupt Taliban activity near an area called the belly button. The belly button was a round out crop of mountains approximately 20 Km in diameter with several passes through them. It was a main supply route for the Taliban bringing fighters and equipment south to Kandahar and Helmand areas. The Americans requested our M777 guns because of the good showing we had made earlier in Helmand area when we had fired in support of their operations there. Right now we have the largest calibre guns in theatre and everyone wants them.

We also supported the American Special Forces to the extreme North West of us when they were ambushed numerous times by the Taliban. The targets were so far away that we had to use rocket assist projectiles to achieve the range required. My troop set the distance record of 30067m for the Canadian artillery with 155mm guns, shooting 67m farther than the round is rated for.

 By day six we had more or less silenced their mortars and rockets, so the Taliban tried to attack our Southern flank with small arms and RPG fire. The attack lasted only a few minutes as the Americans and ANA poured so much fire down upon the Taliban that our observer had to mark the mortar targets with smoke in order to determine which explosions were our mortars and which were those of the American grenade launchers. The Taliban drove away so fast that we could see their trucks jumping over the wadis.

 Over the span of the first two weeks, we shot many missions in support of the Americans clearing the area around us and continuing to ensure that the Taliban did not try to reoccupy their firing positions in the mountains to our north. We monitored the Taliban communications and used there chatter against them. Quite often using the chatter to pick or adjust our artillery fire. The Taliban always collect their dead, this was a terrible disadvantage to them as we would quite often engage their clean up teams.

 On one